Google Begins Removing Search Results to Comply With ‘Right to be Forgotten’

Google has started removing search results, following the European Court of Justice landmark “right to be forgotten” ruling in May.

“This week we’re starting to take action on the removals requests that we’ve received,” A Google spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal. “This is a new process for us. Each request has to be assessed individually, and we’re working as quickly as possible to get through the queue.”

Google doesn’t sound too pleased about this, and hasn’t revealed any further details about the process, which means it’s not clear how many requests the firm has received, nor how many it has removed so far. If recent reports are to be believed, takedown requests have topped 50,000.

Bloomberg noted that the internet search engine has removed a link to a Spanish newspaper that was the target of a court case by Mario Costeja Gonzalez. A Search of Gonzalez’s name now shows text at the bottom of the page, which reads, “Some results may have been removed under data-protection law in Europe.”

“We’re showing this notice in Europe when a user searches for most names, not just pages that have been affected by a removal,” Google clarified on its website.

Towards the end of May, Google started offering EU citizens an online form to fill out if they want a link removed from its search results.

When submitting a request, Google said that users will have to provide at least one kind of photo ID, and stated that links will only be removed if the information is erroneous, misleading, or no longer relevant.

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